Microsoft Project 2002 Professional

Intended to be used with Microsoft Project Server 2002, Microsoft Project Professional 2002 is Microsoft's new enterprise project management program. Project Professional has all the core project management features found in Microsoft Project Standard, so you can manage your project plans, communicate project status, and report project information quickly and efficiently. When used with Microsoft Project Server, it also includes enterprise resource management capabilities and portfolio management features, such as real-time reporting and scenario analysis tools. These tools enable project managers and business decision-makers to view project and resource information across their department or the entire organization.

Microsoft Project Server centrally stores the project and resource information published from Microsoft Project Professional. Microsoft Project Server extends this information to project teams through its Web portal, called Microsoft Project Web Access. You can then use Web Access's Resource Centre to view, group, and edit resource information and even evaluate resource utilization and availability across multiple projects.

Project Professional has all the tools of Project Standard and the same clear interface and useful smart tags and task panes. But if you're working with other departments or managing projects across the company, you'll want its extra enterprise features for customising the way projects work and managing resources across all your teams and projects.

Keeping track of multiple projects across a large company is a daunting task when projects are competing for resources and money. Project Professional lets you centralise specific and generic resources in the company address book and monitor them across projects. You can start by assigning generic resources as placeholders when you plan a project and then automatically allocate whichever real resources are available, in the right place and have the right skills with the Resource Substitution Wizard. You can still allocate specific resources and people yourself and you can choose whether to share resources or not.

Even more than with Project Standard, the collaborative tools rely on running Project Server; that also lets you see resources, get an overview of multiple projects and model what-if scenarios. You can also create and share documents, templates and custom fields for resources and tasks to make sure everyone is working the same way. Enterprise templates let you make sure projects follow company procedures and stick to company calendars and working hours. Put generic resources in the templates and the Team Builder tools will automatically find the people you need to work on them.

Note: To achieve the full benefit of the enterprise resource and portfolio management features, Microsoft Project Professional must be used with Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft Project Server Client Access License(s) (CALs).

To use Microsoft Project Web Access you need: Microsoft Project Server 2002 and 5-15 MB of additional available hard disk space

Product information is advisory only. Specifications and compatibility should be checked with the manufacturer before order. Images are for illustrative purposes only.